Israel's 1967 Governmental Debate about the Annexation of East Jerusalem: The Nascent Alliance with the United States, Overshadowed by “United Jerusalem”

Abstract

“No Israeli, dove or hawk, will ever surrender any part of Jerusalem.”Arthur J. Goldberg, United States Ambassador to the United Nations 1965–68 The main position of modern international law prohibits the annexation of occupied territory. Israel, however, like Jordan two decades earlier, annexed East Jerusalem after its occupation in June 1967, and applied its national laws there. Although the legality of the Israeli move according to international law has been debated extensively ever since, the fact that in doing so Israel chose to act contrary to expressed American objections to this move has not been thoroughly examined, however. This research focuses on the Israeli governmental deliberations and eventual decision to annex East Jerusalem, against the backdrop of the early days of the emergence of a hesitant Israeli–American alliance following the 1967 War. Through an analysis of Israeli government meeting protocols, now released to the public, together with American and United Nations sources and existing scholarship, I aim to uncover what weight the United States objection to Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem held in the Israeli government's deliberations concerning whether or not to annex it.